Turntables
Shameful to confess, but we dropped turntables from our awards for two years, back when new models were rare and the format seemed reduced to almost cult status. Now vinyl is the great success story among the remaining physical media, sales rising, and turntable sales too, encouraging new designs and allowing us to recommend some exciting new decks for spinning the black stuff.
Turntables were always an equipment type which presented the opposite of diminishing returns — the more you spend the better things get, and a cheap turntable is really no solution at all. The price of this Thorens — $1490 including the arm and cartridge — is a fair level to consider if you’re returning to the vinyl fold, especially as Swiss-based Thorens has brought technologies to the belt-driven TD 203 that are unusual at this price, and which help it achieve a level of sound significantly above its price range.
Chief among these is the uni-pivot arm, the TD 203 boasts a uni-pivot bearing for the TP 82 tonearm, instead of the more common gimballed bearings used at this price level. Where gimballed bearings keep an arm locked in two dimensions, this tonearm’s unipivot bearing has a carbide tip resting in an arrangement of five tiny bearing balls. This gives it the freedom to wobble in all manner of worrying directions until stabilised by the anti-skate weight (see below), but has the advantage of performing more independently of its support. Sonically most consider this freedom of movement to allow unipivots to achieve higher levels of detail, while this type of bearing also typically enjoys less wear and reduces the possibility of arm resonances.
Also unusual at this price is the luxury of electronic speed change, rather than having to manually move the belt. Flicking a switch for speed change seems such a simple thing, but it’s a luxury at this price level, and a most welcome one.
As befitting a relatively entry-level vinyl spinner Thorens has kept set-up nicely simple — the TD 203 arrives with arm and cartridge attached, connected and well aligned; you just need to attach the weights and use the supplied tracking gauge to balance up the tonearm and TAS 257 moving-magnet cartridge at 2.3 grams (23mN) tracking weight; this is all assisted by a good printed manual, with pictures (even better viewed online in colour). Bring reading glasses and a bright light when you’re hanging that anti-skate weight!
Just enough effort to make it feel like it’s worthwhile, then, after which you can settle down into a sonic performance that we loved — resolution, airiness and solidity beyond its price bracket, and a highly precise delivery with excellent imaging. For detail, try the way the bass resonance rattles the snare wires at the start of The Beatles’ ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ from the ‘Hey Jude’ LP, and the delivery of McCartney’s off-mike wails at the close. Disc after disc we span, old and new. If you invest in a record cleaner, you can enjoy even secondhand LPs with an absolute minimum of surface noise.
Available in black, white and the red that Thorens is making something of a trademark, the TD 203 is a doozie of a turntable at such a relatively affordable price. You can go higher, of course (turn the page), but this deck punches well above its weight. www.qualifi.com.au